Meadows Psychology Service is proud to deliver a range of flexible and adaptive projects in partnership with local authorities.
These projects are tailored to meet the specific needs of children and young people within that authority who have experienced significant trauma.
‘Our Safe Space’ is the emotional health and well-being service for Wigan’s care-experienced children and care leavers, which Meadows Psychology Service has been delivering for a year. It is a flexible and responsive service designed for the cohort of children looked after by Wigan Local Authority.
Why Was the Service Needed?
There are over 700 looked-after children aged 0 – 18 and over 220 care leavers aged 18 – 25 in Wigan. Looked after children may have experienced significant trauma in their lives, which is usually complex and repeated.
Children who have experienced significant trauma within their early relationships can have difficulty trusting and accepting the care they need and deserve. This can lead to difficulties within the carer-child relationship and, sadly, can result in placement breakdown.
This is particularly problematic because each change of carer can trigger further feelings of rejection for a child or young person who has already experienced significant relational trauma. As a result, the child or young person’s difficulties with attachment are further compounded.
It is perhaps not surprising that placement stability is an important factor in promoting good outcomes for Looked After Children and Care Leavers.
We also know that Looked After Children and Care Leavers are significantly more likely to suffer mental health problems than the general population.
Research shows that a young person leaving care in the UK is five times more likely to attempt suicide than their peers. Supporting the emotional health and well-being of this cohort of young people is paramount.
What Does ‘Our Safe Space’ Aim to Achieve?
The Emotional and Mental Health Service for Children in Care and Care Leavers is designed to improve the mental health and emotional well-being of children and young people who are looked after by Wigan Council and Care Leavers. It aims to:
• Support children, young people, and their carer/s to prevent escalation to more specialist services.
• Enhance the understanding and knowledge of carers, foster carers, and social care professionals about the factors affecting the mental health and emotional well-being of children and young people in care and how to best support them.
• Improve the emotional well-being and resilience of carers to ensure the best support is available for the children and young people in care who are accessing this service.
• Increase placement stability and reduce placement breakdowns by providing an adaptable service that meets the needs of individual children and their carer/s, creating a sustainable home environment for all involved.
How is Our Safe Space Working to Achieve These Aims?
Support is provided to young people and carers through a wide range of services, including:
- Entry to Care Screening.
- Foster carer consultation: a safe, therapeutic space for the foster carers to work alongside a psychological therapist to understand the child’s needs and to develop and reflect on therapeutic parenting strategies.
- Direct therapeutic interventions, where appropriate, to support the development of safety within the child-carer relationship (including therapy, Dyadic Developmental Psychotherapy and Cognitive Behavioural Therapy for Trauma).
- Specialist training and workshops for foster carers and professionals to enhance understanding of the impact of developmental and relational trauma and ways to develop safety and trust within the child-carer relationship.
- Group therapeutic intervention training for carers on understanding and utilising therapeutic parenting techniques.
Holding a space at the Wigan Care Leavers hub to provide support to young people and PAs.
Continuous outcomes monitoring for all of the services being delivered.
As with all of our services, continuous evaluation and review allow us to ensure that ‘Our Safe Space’ effectively meets the needs of Wigan’s care-experienced children and young people.
Impact to Date
We are incredibly proud of the service’s success to date.
The feedback we receive from the individuals that we support is invaluable to us, and really highlights the reason why we do the work that we do!
Here is just some of the wonderful feedback we have received recently:
“What you gain in a short amount of time is invaluable. It should be mandatory training for fostering.” – A foster carer who attended our Foundations for Attachment Training.
“The whole consultation was really relaxed yet thorough. I felt everything was touched upon and fully explained. Thank you so much for all your help and for taking the time to take an interest in mine and [young person’s] feelings too.” – A foster carer following a consultation.
“It is the best training I have ever had and really helpful.” – A foster carer who attended our Nurturing Attachments training.
We are also thrilled to report that the data gathered thus far shows incredibly positive results.
We have evidenced significant improvements across several areas that are linked to improved relationships between caregivers and children who have experienced trauma.
It is also important to note that all of these measures are linked to increased placement stability and improved outcomes for care-experienced children and young people.
The demand for the service continues to be high, and we work closely with senior leaders to ensure the service offers to use the resource most responsively and effectively to meet the needs of care-experienced children, young people, families, and care leavers.
Recent Highlights
A particular recent highlight was our attendance at the Foster Carer Fortnight event. It was a privilege and so much fun!
We have also had the privilege of connecting with the children and young people at the Million Voices network as part of our service user participation work. Some of the group visited the Our Safe Space therapy suite in Leigh recently to play games, learn more about the service, and provide valuable feedback.
We also recently attended the Commissioners Conference, where Meadows Psychology Service and our colleagues from Wigan Council delivered a joint presentation, sharing Our Safe Space’s journey and service delivery.
This was extremely well received by commissioners and other professionals, and some local authorities were keen to explore how they could commission a similar service. We are extremely proud of what we have collaboratively achieved with Wigan Council.
If you would like to learn more about our local authority partnerships or the other services that we provide, please get in touch today.
